


Hey, Bertram?

by Rosie2009



Category: Disney - All Media Types, Jessie (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-19
Updated: 2020-10-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:53:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27096103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosie2009/pseuds/Rosie2009
Summary: ALERT: SPOILERS FOR JESSIE'S ENDING!!! Four times the kids admit that they miss Jessie and the one time that Bertram does. Family and friendship feels with Jessie and Emma, Luke, Ravi, Zuri, and Bertram.
Relationships: Bertram Winkle & Emma Ross, Bertram Winkle & Jessie Prescott, Bertram Winkle & Luke Ross, Bertram Winkle & Ravi Ross, Bertram Winkle & Zuri Ross, Jessie Prescott & Emma Ross, Jessie Prescott & Luke Ross, Jessie Prescott & Ravi Ross, Jessie Prescott & Zuri Ross
Comments: 5
Kudos: 17





	Hey, Bertram?

“Hey, Bertram?” a small voice tentatively called as the older man sat in a chair in front of the large television in the screening room. He was almost asleep, and the sound had just managed to reach his ears in that barely unconscious state, and he jerked awake. He turned his head toward the source of the sound, aiming to scold whichever one of the little rug rats that woke him up in the middle of the night.

However, before he could get the words out of his mouth, he realized that Zuri was standing there, her little face wet with tears and her bottom lip quivering. His eyes softened as he looked at her, and he swallowed a bit, trying to figure out what to say.

“Umm… Zuri, what are you doing up at this hour?” he questioned. While he expected something snarky to be said in return, she very much surprised him with a complete lack of a response as she approached him.

He immediately knew that the girl was needing something that he was not well-equipped to offer her. Something that no one here, not even Christina in all of her well-meaning ways and attempts to play an active role in the kids’ lives.

Zuri needed Jessie.

“I had a nightmare,” Zuri informed him, and Bertram’s mouth went dry as he was totally at a loss as to what to do with the kid.

He knew what Jessie would do. Jessie would have taken Zuri into her arms on her lap, even though the kid was truly too big to fit there anymore, and Jessie would just hold her tight until the girl either stopped crying or went to sleep. And then Jessie would either guide the girl up the stairs or carry her upstairs and then tuck her in with a kiss.

Bertram, on the other hand, was not comfortable with that idea at all.

However, he needed to give Zuri some sort of reassurance because she looked as if she were going to break down into even worse of a mess than she already was at this moment.

“Whatever it was, it’s not real. It’s not anything to worry about,” Bertram tried to comfort her at a distance. She looked at him for a long moment, and he knew that the statement wasn’t good enough.

He hesitantly opened an arm to the girl to hug her, and she immediately launched herself on him, hugging him tightly. He tensed a bit, not expecting this and not really liking it but knowing that he had to stay there for her.

Zuri sniffled for a few moments before finally uttering the words that Bertram had almost sensed coming from her.

“I miss Jessie,” Zuri whined pitifully against Bertram, her thin arms wrapped around him, and he somewhat awkwardly placed a hand on her back with a sigh despite the fact that he had initiated the entire ordeal. He knew exactly how she felt.

Despite the fact that he so often acted as if the children and Jessie were not that important to him, he had definitely been rethinking that entire philosophy since Jessie had left for her acting career. The truth was that he really missed the redhead in all of her sarcasm, awkwardness, and unconditional love. He even missed her terrible boyfriend fails that she _frequently_ discussed.

“I do, too,” he finally told the girl, bringing his other arm around her as he kept an eye out for Christina. He knew that if the girl’s mother were to see Zuri crying, she would be immediately worried, and Zuri would have to tell Christina the truth. And Christina would undoubtedly not like it.

“I want Jessie to come back,” Zuri sobbed a little, and Bertram nodded.

“I know, I know… It’s okay,” he told her, not having any idea how to do this whole comforting thing. This was always Jessie’s forte. Whenever any of the kids needed attention or comforting as the case may have been, Jessie was there to take care of it with open arms. It was one of the many things that the kids loved her for.

But he knew that there was nothing that would cure this ache except Jessie herself.

So he just wrapped his arms around her and tried to make her feel better in the best manner that he could, patting her back and holding her until she eventually fell asleep, and he had to wake her to help her up the stairs in her sleep-addled, hazy mind.

And as he put her to bed, she whispered once more.

“I miss Jessie.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Hey, Bertram?” Ravi piped up as he looked at his science assignment, his chemistry tools on the table, and Bertram turned toward the boy, some dread on his face as he looked at Ravi. He was very much worried about what the kid could potentially ask him to do in concern to his science. However, the boy didn’t even seem to be fully focused on his work, his eyes somewhere else.

“Ravi, I’m not helping you with an experiment,” Bertram immediately told him, and Ravi shook his head slowly.

“No, no, do not worry, it is not that,” Ravi replied to him, and Bertram nodded, turning back to what he was doing. However, something stopped him as he realized that Ravi seemed to be acting especially odd.

But just before he could turn to face the boy once again, Ravi spoke.

“Bertram, do you think that I will ever have friends?” Ravi asked, but it was not quite in the same tone that he usually questioned it. This time, there was a hint of something else in his voice. Something especially lonely.

Once again, it was a problem that demanded Jessie’s attention. And once again, Jessie was not there to provide.

So, Bertram turned toward the boy, and the older man tried his best to smile a bit and seem at least a little pleasant, despite the fact that was not his specialty.

“Sure, you will,” Bertram replied, feeling only the slightest bit more comfortable with the situation. After all, Ravi’s predicament with his social life was not an uncommon occurrence, but the way he looked as if he had lost his nonexistent best friend was indicative of the true oddness of the situation.

Ravi worriedly eyed the older man, and he looked down at the beakers set down before him. He reached over, running his finger along the smooth glass carefully as he sighed deeply.

“I really do miss Jessie,” Ravi admitted, and Bertram frowned a bit, understanding completely.

Jessie ordinarily would have just handled Ravi’s friend situation with a comforting hand to the shoulder as she sat down next to him and offered to take him out to a place where they could potentially meet kids his own age. And if that did not work, she would have offered to help him with his chemistry work, which Ravi would happily agree to even if he only asked her to hand him certain objects throughout his procedure.

“I know… I do, too,” Bertram confessed in return, and Ravi nodded slowly, resting his chin on the table dejectedly. Bertram hesitantly came over to the kid and patted his back fondly.

“She always knew exactly what to do and say,” Ravi told the man sadly, and Bertram nodded solemnly.

Bertram knew that Jessie was very special to Ravi because she always tried diligently to not only be his nanny but to also play the role of his friend. And for a lonely boy with no social life, that was quite possibly the greatest treasure in the world.

Jessie always made Ravi feel as if he were actually someone interesting and worth spending time with. Granted, Luke also helped him greatly with this as well, but Jessie was always there. Even with the schoolwork that she almost always did not understand, she was always willing to listen to Ravi and try to comprehend what he was telling her.

And Bertram had no idea how to do things like Jessie, despite the fact that he knew what she would do.

So he just offered Ravi a fond squeeze of the shoulder, giving the boy the best that he had to offer as he sat down next to the boy. He had to at least give this Jessie way a try.

“So…. Um… What are you working on?”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Hey, Bertram?” Luke called from what used to be Jessie’s room. Bertram paused, looking in the direction that the voice came from with some disgust. After all, Luke was his least favorite child out of the entire group of kids, despite the fact that he did not actually dislike him as much as he acted like he did.

The door was swung ajar and he could see Luke sitting on the bed, holding something that appeared to be quite small. Strangely, he did not have a hint of that usual mischievous confidence that always played upon his face. Immediately, Bertram’s hardened expression dissipated as he headed over to the doorway and entered carefully.

“What?” he questioned somewhat gruffly. Luke looked up at the older man, an uncharacteristic dejectedness in his gaze. Bertram looked down at what Luke was holding.

It was those terrible earrings that Emma criticized on multiple occasions that Jessie always without fail wore. Bertram furrowed his brow as he looked at the freckle-faced kid.

“Jessie left her earrings,” Luke spoke, and Bertram just nodded for lack of a better response.

“It’s a good thing. She didn’t need to wear them, because they looked terrible,” Bertram finally mustered, and Luke barely managed a smile before it quickly fell away. The butler cleared his throat, feeling extremely awkward. After all, Luke and he did not have much one-on-one interaction.

“Y’know, I thought she was pretty with them,” Luke confessed, and Bertram was amazed at the complete lack of a creepy tone to the statement as per usual when he talked about Jessie’s appearance.

“Yeah, I would have guessed that,” Bertram replied without the bite that the statement would have normally contained. Luke fingered the earrings carefully, examining them, and he then looked up at Bertram hesitantly.

“I miss Jessie a lot,” Luke told the older man, and Bertram just quietly nodded in reply.

These kids were really starting to get to him with this entire Jessie ordeal. Of course, the Jessie ordeal itself was really beginning to get to him as well.

“Now’s the time when Jessie would come in and drag me out by the ear, telling me that I’m being creepy,” Luke chuckled with only the lightest touches of humor in his statement, and Bertram smiled ever so slightly, nodding in reply as he pictured the scene.

He knew how Jessie would react to Luke being in her room. However, he also knew that if Luke was in her room and he looked this sad, she would have reacted to him with a loving hug as she gently guided him out of the room, talking with him as they went to his room instead. Despite its resemblance to a contamination zone, she would step over all of the piles of dirty clothes to make her way over to his TV to play video games with him until he felt better.

“Do you think it’ll get any better?” Luke eventually asked, looking up at Bertram somewhat painedly with tears shining in his eyes. Bertram looked down at the boy, wanting to muster something positive but knowing that there was no good thing to say about the situation.

“With time, it’ll get better,” Bertram finally told him, not sure what else to say. After all, it was difficult to just tell the boy that he would get over it eventually when Bertram knew that it was a much bigger problem than that.

These kids had lost their caretaker, their defender, their discipliner, their friend, their ally, and their biggest fan.

They had lost their _mother_.

There was only so much that Christina could do to fill that empty, gaping hole for the kids, because despite the fact that she was their biological mother, she was not the person that stayed with them throughout the most important years of their lives--- bandaging boo-boos, cuddling sadness away, celebrating victories proudly, kissing goodbyes, reading bedtime stories. Jessie had been there for the kids, and now that she was gone, it had left the children completely directionless.

So Bertram sat down next to Luke on the bed, placing an arm around the boy’s shoulders as he looked at the earrings with him.

And the both of them just sat there for a while.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Hey, Bertram?”

“Hm?” he hummed in return, his voice sounding much more like a grumpy growl as he flipped a page in his magazine.

“Do you think Jessie would like this outfit?” Emma asked, and Bertram turned his head back to look at the teen. She was standing there, holding a pink dress with a pink camouflage jacket and some shoes that looked slightly too big for her. Bertram raised an eyebrow, confused as to why Emma was wearing this outfit.

“Yeah, _she_ would. I’m not sure it looks like something that _you_ would like, though,” Bertram expressed honestly, returning to the pictures of the butlers in the magazine.

“Oh, no! It’s not for me! It’s for Jessie. I wanted to make her something, and she always used to tell me what my fashion designs looked like and what she thought of them, but she’s not here and obviously I couldn’t show her this without ruining the surprise, so I thought I’d ask you,” Emma explained to Bertram in that usual quick, babbling tone that she took on whenever she was excited or nervous about something.

Bertram looked back at her again. Immediately, he came to the conclusion that Emma was some blend of both. But there was something else in her eyes as well. It was a sadness that was not characteristic of the blonde.

“I think Jessie will love it,” Bertram told the girl, and Emma smiled proudly, clapping excitedly.

However, after a moment, her excitement faded a little, and she looked down at the jacket in her arms. She sighed deeply and sat down on the couch not too far from Bertram. He looked at her strangely, knowing that she had something she needed to say.

“It was always so nice talking to her about my designs. She always was the most excited about them, and she never gave up on me and my abilities,” Emma told Bertram quietly. Bertram knew why she was speaking so lowly. The girl obviously didn’t want her mother to hear. Emma looked almost in pain as she spoke about this, and she swallowed hard as she looked down.

“Mom tries really hard, but she just doesn’t have the same enthusiasm that Jessie had. Jessie never tried to give unwanted advice about my designs and she always just offered support. Even when she knew that the outfit was horrible,” Emma expressed, and Bertram nodded, knowing how Jessie was with Emma.

Jessie always was Emma’s biggest supporter and she always showered Emma with praise whenever she showed off her designs to Jessie. Jessie would always hug her tightly, pressing her head against Emma’s and stroking her hair fondly as she looked through Emma’s work with her. Emma always greatly appreciated the additional attention and the kudos, and Jessie always offered them liberally.

“She was always there, making me feel better about things and trying to understand, and I just,” Emma trailed off, putting a hand on the side of her face as she tried to reel in her emotions.

“And… I really miss Jessie so much,” Emma told him.

Once again, the children were ailing about Jessie and her desertion. Granted, she was following her dream and the kids did not want to get in the way of that, but they still secretly wanted her to stay. That much was astoundingly clear after their individual confessions of missing the redhead. They all loved her dearly and her absence was quite obviously killing them on the inside.

Bertram honestly was dying a bit as well with each admission.

“I know you do. Everybody does,” Bertram assured her somewhat sadly, and Emma nodded just barely, sniffling slightly as she tried to keep the tears at bay and avoid the quivering of her bottom lip.

“I want her to come home,” Emma pitifully admitted, holding her face in her hands, and Bertram sighed, leaning forward and patting her back as she failed miserably in holding back the tears. He put down his magazine nearby and scooted a bit closer to the girl as he tried to make her feel at least a little better.

“I know, I know. It’s okay,” Bertram reassured, and Emma sniffed hard.

And there they sat in that manner until Emma had to pull herself together and head upstairs, hearing her mother heading into the living room.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“Hey, Bertram?” a voice called, and Bertram immediately turned around to face the elevator. To his surprise, there was a certain redhead standing there before him with a few suitcases and that painfully familiar goofy smile.

It was Jessie.

His eyes went wide and he looked at the young woman. She grinned at him, stepping through the elevator doorway as she approached. Bertram eyes went wide as he stared at her.

Jessie stopped in front of him, and he suddenly felt the strangest of feelings tugging at his chest. He unashamedly stared at her for the longest time, and she tilted her head slightly, her smile disappearing a bit as the confusion began to enter her face.

“What is it? Do I have something on my face? Darn it, I knew I should’ve checked my compact mirror before I---” Bertram immediately cut her off, stepping forward and wrapping the redhead in a tight hug as he tried not to cry. He almost lost it, however, when she returned the embrace.

They stood there for a moment, him just hugging her tightly, and though he knew he must be making Jessie feel terribly uncomfortable, he couldn’t quite bring himself to let go of her.

He had truly missed the girl. He had come to think of her as probably the best friend he ever had, and he missed everything about her. Her stories of woe and her irritating quips about him in his napping, cheese-loving, hoarding ways.

After a long moment, he finally let her go, looking her in the face. She still had that hint of confusion, but her brown eyes were radiating warmth as she studied his face.

“Okay, well, since I’m assuming there’s nothing on my face, I guess I’ll tell you the news! I’m here to stay for a whole month. Isn’t that great?!” Jessie told him, genuine excitement in her face as she almost looked as if she would burst with her thrilled bouncing in place.

“Where are the kids?” Jessie asked, looking around Bertram as she tried to spot the children. _Her_ children.

Bertram just smiled at her, unable to hold back the strong urge to allow his happiness with her return to show.

“They’re upstairs in their rooms,” he told her, his voice affected strongly by the huge, overwhelming grin on his face as he looked at the redhead. Jessie returned her gaze to his curiously.

They just looked at each other for a minute until Jessie finally spoke up curiously.

“What?” she asked, and Bertram shook his head, looking down at the floor before shifting his eyes back to her own.

“Nothing. It’s just,” he trailed off, chuckling a bit under his breath as he tried to hold back the tears.

“I missed you, Jessie.”


End file.
